In school I learnt about how we breathe. I learnt that this universal mechanism involves the diaphragm, rib muscles, trachea…all the way down to the oxygen and blood molecules.
A baby takes his first breath of air around 10 seconds after birth. For a motion that became so integral from day one, I rarely thought about it. Except during those exceptionally chilly mornings, when steam comes out of my mouth in the cold winter air. I would instantly ask the boy to watch as I rapidly inhale and exhale. Certainly the excitement of breathing steam still fills me at this age.
I guess I don’t have strong lungs, in Chinese medicine they call it 氣虛 (Qi deficiency). I remember in H-city’s underground train, when the chest seems to betray me by taking my breath out of reach, accompanied with tingling feelings at my fingertips. Those moments also brought the act of breathing to mind.
People sometimes uses the expression “we breathe the same air”. Thinking of it now, I’d rather believe that we only breathe the same air as ourselves, as who and where I am. If breaths can be recorded and displayed like specimens, can we see a person from just his breath?
Speaking of specimen, it was said that Henry Ford kept a test tube of air for many years, and inside the tube was a sample from the last breath of his late friend Thomas Edison. I’ve heard of air and vacuum samples taken from places even like the Moon, but couldn’t recall the keeping of someone’s breath. As if a person’s breath holds the universe he is in and the life he lived. Each breath a fullness of creation.
Life coaches talks about box breathing to relieve stress. These sometimes left me doubts, since life’s dynamics can so easily break any equilibrium, weeks of mindfulness exercise then in vain. I find it more satisfying to think of breathing like a swing in the park. As it navigates the space to and from its equilibrium, it carries life in and out, up and down, further and further. The purpose is not to stop but carry on. 🌬️
“Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.”
- Genesis 2:7
16.03.24
